DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

We use this solution for providing software-defined storage that is virtualized, in a true HA configuration. It provides SAN storage services to VMware vCenter hosts and VMware Horizon hosts, as well as some physical Windows and Linux servers. This platform allows us to leverage any storage that Windows can leverage, including other vendor SAN devices.  This allows us to keep existing storage, mirror SANs from 2 different vendors and even allow very easy migration from one vendor to another.  Most of our locations just use RAID attached storage (as it is the least expensive) with enterprise-class drives (both HDD and SSD).

This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage. So, we can throw in our own enterprise-class hardware (including SSDs) and not pay any extra based on the type of storage we use. This is the same model used with server virtualization.

This has allowed us to keep the hardware separate from software. It is true "storage virtualization" at its finest. It has all the features of any high-end SAN such as fiber channel, iSCSI, thin provisioning, storage tiering, snapshots, continuous data protection/recovery, synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, performance reporting/graphing, and true HA design.

DataCore recently added a hardware appliance for customers who what a turnkey, easy to install solution.  So if engineering the underlying-storage is not your cup of tea, their appliance, which is built on top of Dell server/storage hardware, is the way to go.

No more vendor lock-in, overpriced drives, or forklift upgrades. With DataCore SANsymphony, you can utilize just about any storage you wish with this product such as another SAN, NAS, JBOD, FusionIO, etc. If Windows can see it as a non-removable drive, you can use it with SANsymphony. Also, you can use this to mirror any of these various types of storage, which is awesome for migration. Say, for example, you have an HP SAN and you want to migrate off it to your own JBOD-type storage, or you have two sites with two different storage SANs that you want to replicate data between. With DataCore, it is possible to mix and match just about any storage platform you want to use.

As software-defined storage, the system is designed to run on top of Windows Server OS (which can be virtual or physical) and can utilize the server's RAM to provide disk cache. This makes our 7.2K HDDs class storage run really fast, allowing us to use a bottom-tier class of drive and get the performance of a much higher class of drive. Also, if we have to add capacity or replace drives then we can just order replacement drives off the web, saving us quite a bit of money. Of course, we still use "enterprise-class" drives but we don't pay through the nose to buy hardware. If we want to upgrade the Ethernet ports from 1Gb to 10Gb then we just do it. The same goes for FC. If we want to upgrade from 4Gb FC to 16Gb, we don't have to do a forklift upgrade. We just buy the HBAs and we're off the to races.

The other great thing is DataCore keeps their product on VMware's approved HCL. So even if you have a SAN (backend storage) that falls off the HCL with VMware, because it's virtualized storage behind DataCore, you're covered. If you put the storage behind DataCore then you won't have to worry about VMware's HCL any longer. Because of this fundamental practice, DataCore was one of the first storage vendors to support VVOLs.

The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs.

There's very little that I can find in their software that I would say needs to be improved. Sometimes the updates are too frequent, where just as we finish updating all of our sites, another update comes out.

The de-dup console is not yet integrated inside the main SANsymphony console. They are working on it but it's not there yet.

While their console allows you to connect to each of the nodes without closing the interface, you have to log out and back in when you switch between different storage server groups. It would be nice if they had an interface more like vCenter, where you see all of the server groups in a list and can just click on each group. It would be nice to be able to see multiple groups at the same time.

Having more of an Enterprise approach (v/s a local storage cluster) view would provide better management of the environment. For example, their current reports can only be run for each storage server group. There is currently not a way to run the same reports or look at performance across the enterprise (only the local site).

Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial. Currently, DataCore does not have this. They recently added a web-based dashboard called DataCore Insight Services (DIS) to their product. However, you will need to be on their subscription-based model v/s their traditional yearly maintenance-based model. Also, the current DIS product does not span multiple storage groups and is in its infancy and is still very rudimentary in nature.  However, knowing DataCore's track record for fast, innovative development, I know it won't be long before they get it right.

We have been using this solution since 2008 (over 12 years).

The software over the years has matured to be very robust and allows you to build a very high-performing storage platform.

This product in unlimited in scalability.

DataCore Support is OUTSTANDING and they release new updates and features frequently (sometimes almost too frequently).  Their support department is a well-oiled machine and is the gold standard for how all vendors should be. Their online ticketing system allows us to not just see individual cases but for anyone in our enterprise/storage team.

Yes - We had a mix of various, black-box, type SANs (Dell, HP, Lefthand, DottHill, and EMC to name a few).  We switched to standardize the storage across the enterprise, maintain VMware supported storage, reduce costs, and add flexibility.

If you're an experienced SAN administrator you'll have no problems understanding their setup.  It is very straight forward.  The design of what you can do, because it's so flexible, is the most complex part.  You have LOTS of options. 

In-House

Within the first year, the product has paid for itself.

I would recommend sending administrators through DataCore's DCIE training/certification.  DataCore has many options from hyper-converged solution, to even providing their own storage appliances if that's what you are looking for. 

Yes - Dell, EMC, and HP.

While they support de-dup, it is recommended that you not de-dup the storage used for operating systems or high-change rated type data. The requires some planning to ensure the storage that is targeted for de-dup only have data that end users would be using (such as MS Office files, etc.)

We use SANsymphony for all of our business-critical data. We run a dual host, VMware 6.7 host environment with a 25Gb/s network fabric connecting to mirrored SANsymphony nodes. We have two business systems running in this environment. One is running Red Hat Linux and Progress DB, whereas the other is running Windows and Microsoft SQL server.

I'd have to say that the biggest improvement gained by using SANsymphony has to be the performance of the product. When we migrated from our physical SQL server hardware storage to SANsymphony's software-defined storage, with its clever caching mechanism, we saw a huge increase in performance. This decreases the amount of time it takes to make a sale and keeps both our staff and customers happy.

SANsymphony is a very versatile product and its vendor's agnostic nature allows us to pick and choose our hardware platform. Its redundancy allows us to perform maintenance 'on the fly' and protects our data from all manners of failure.

As a policy, we tend not to over-commit our storage (a feature I'm sure others find really handy). There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool.

I can't think of any other features that SANsymphony needs - it is a very comprehensive storage solution.

We use this product as a storage network.

The performance is good.

The interface is user-friendly.

I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report. Things like performance and usage can be shown.

It would be helpful to have better monitoring tools.

I have been using DataCore SANsymphony for 11 years.

The stability is perfect.

Scalability is good and it is important for us. I am working in an industry where most of the installations are long-term. Over time, we have to add devices to the solution.

We have two sites, each with about 1,000 people who are using it.

The technical support is perfect.

Pricing has improved but it is still expensive. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

My advice to anybody who is considering SANSymphony is that it is flexible, user-friendly, and a product that I recommend.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have been using DataCore SANsymphony for many years to protect data-availability and keeping productive. It helps us to improve reliability for our complete IT solutions.

In the time of using DataCore SANsympohny Hyper-converged-Infrastructure, we had no storage-related downtime in our environment. The server and storage functionality works, and maintenance is easier to handle depending on the redundancy.

DataCore is an administrator's and users' friend.

Performance boost (MegaCash, Parallel I/O technology) and Continuous data protection (CDP) are the features we love most because security and being productive are big points for us.

DataCore is helping us focus on our core business and keep it running, which is important for our customer success.

Supporting of Automated-Storage-Tiering (AST) is a good feature that saves money.

We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API.

Supporting newer Windows Server versions faster (e.g. Microsoft Windows Server 2019) would be nice.

This solution is very robust and reliable.

It has good scalability. We can scale up in 1TB steps.

We have found that technical support has good skill levels and availability.

We did not have another SDS solution before this one.

This initial setup of this solution wasn´t complex. The necessary functional test plan of the implementation company was time-consuming, but it guaranteed the correct implementation.

We implemented this solution using our solution provider with vendor support in the background, and it worked well for us.

Overall, we are happy with innovations, but in the future, we will also look into more improvements.

We use it as part of the PCA. And also to recycle berries for which we deport their native intelligence on DataCore.

DataCore SANsymphony has improved our organization in terms of performance, data security and maintenance plan. We can stop one of our machine rooms without interruption of service to the user.

The most useful feature is the continuity of service and the associated performance. It brings great flexibility.

Additional features that should be included in the next release are "application performance and storage" (new tuning and troubleshooting options).

With DataCore we manage the central storage for VMware virtualisation and Oracle databases. At the first location are two mirrored DataCore servers. At a second site, we use a DataCore server as an asynchronous replication target.

It is easy to manage the storage and simple to enlarge our virtualisation environment. 
DataCore SANsymphony has improved performance, stability and data security of our datacenter.

• The most useful features are the continuity of service, mirroring and auto-tiering, and the associated performance. 
• We enjoy great reliability, flexibility, and performance. 
• DataCore helps to use memory efficiently.

• The client console should be improved. It starts slowly and heavily. 
• After a long time (idle), the displayed information is no longer completely reliable. You have to close and reopen the console for current data. (symptom after upgrade to PSP8)

Very stable, no failures, no interruptions.

High scalability.

quick support enabled  ;-)

No, we did not.

The initial setup was straightforward, no special hardware, good documentation.

Implementation with a DCIE (DataCore certified implementation engineer).

Not calculated.

For installation and upgrades, work with a good IT partner with a DCIE.

EMC, NetApp.

I use DataCore SANsymphony for the redundancy with two nodes. It's a good solution with a good price for a small infrastructure like us.

It has improved performance, security, RTO, RPO, and timeout. It has improved my organization with the prevention of a breakdown.

Redundancy and improved performance in terms of storage with auto-tiering are the most valuable features. 

It needs just two nodes for the operating system and licensing.

I would like for it to improve into a more ergonomic management console and a translation into the French language. It should have some process for a shutdown of a VM properly in case of a problem.

The stability is good for the moment.

I feel that the scalability of this solution is very good.

This is our first solution in the world of the hyperconvergence.

Our ROI is from good security.

Storage costs are better with DataCore SANsymphony.

The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore.

I compared it with vSAN.

Good support, very reactive.

Installation of this hyper-converged infrastructure in our school this summer with two servers directly attached. It works perfectly!!

• DataCore SANsymphony allows us to have a reliable, fast and easy administration infrastructure.
• We have a reliable and secure infrastructure thanks to SANsymphony, and all at less cost.

• The parallel I/O function is very useful when there are many requests for read/write access to the disks.
  The administration is simple and easy.
• It is possible to create a virtual disk very easily, and moving the virtual machines is fast.
  

The heavy client mode console should be improved by having a web console to improve accessibility. Also, the analysis time on the storage increase is one month now. This could be improved.